Iran Spy Network 30,000 Strong

Iran’s intelligence service includes 30,000 people who are engaged in covert and clandestine activities that range from spying to stealing technology to terrorist bombings and assassination, according to a Pentagon report.

The report concluded that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, known as MOIS, is "one of the largest and most dynamic intelligence agencies in the Middle East."

The ministry actively supports Iran’s radical Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that has been involved in terrorist bombings from Argentina to Lebanon, according to the report produced by the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Support Program and published last month by the Library of Congress Federal Research Division.

"MOIS provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224," the report said.

The spy service operates in all areas where Iran has interests, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Central Asia, Africa, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, France, Georgia, Germany, Turkey, Britain, and the Americas, including the United States.

Iranian activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela have raised alarm among U.S. government officials.

The effort appears part of "Iran’s strategy of establishing a presence in the backyard of the United States for purposes of expanding Shi’a and revolutionary ideology, establishing networks for intelligence and covert operations, and waging asymmetrical warfare against the United States," the report said.

Israel also is a major target of the MOIS and support for Hezbollah in Lebanon is a major Tehran intelligence objective.

The ministry is under the direct control of Iran’s theocratic dictator, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and all its ministers must become Islamic clerics as a precondition for the post. However, the agency recruits foreigners, including British nationals and Israeli Jews.

"To advance its goals, MOIS recruits individuals regardless of their beliefs, including Arabs or Jews to spy in Israel," the report said.

One MOIS deputy minister, Saeed Emami, was appointed to a key post despite being Jewish by birth.

According to the report, Iranian intelligence is expanding operations in the Middle East and Mediterranean by setting up electronic eavesdropping stations.

"Two Iranian-Syrian [signals intelligence] stations funded by the IRGC reportedly have been active since 2006, one in the al-Jazirah region in northern Syria and the other on the Golan Heights," the report said, noting that additional stations were planned for northern Syria.

"The technology at the two established SIGNIT stations indicates that Iran’s capabilities are still limited, with little scope for high-level strategic intelligence gathering," the report said, noting they "appear to concentrate on supplying information to Lebanese Hezbollah," Iran’s main proxy for terrorism and intelligence-gathering in the region.

Iran also has formed a "cyber command" to conduct both offensive and defensive cyber warfare operations following the June 2010 Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran’s uranium-enrichment infrastructure.

"The success of this virus is an indication of the weakness of Iran’s cyber development," the report said.

The spy agency was linked to a series of assassinations in the 1990s called the "Chain Murders" that exposed it to western criticism.

According to the report, Russia was active in training Iranian intelligence operations beginning in the 1990s.

The Russian SVR spy service, the successor to the Soviet KGB, trained hundreds of MOIS operatives despite the two agencies’ different doctrines.

The cooperation was based on both nations’ goal of limiting U.S. political influence in Central Asia and efforts to stifle ethnic unrest.

"The SVR trained not only hundreds of Iranian agents but also numerous Russian agents inside Iran to equip Iranian intelligence with signals equipment in their headquarters compound," the report said.

Iran’s intelligence is also cooperating with al Qaeda despite the Sunni-Shiite differences in religious ideology.

"Cooperation between Iran and al Qaeda is based on their shared opposition to U.S. hegemony in the region—Iraq and Afghanistan, chiefly—and dates to the 1990s," the report said.

Iran helped a number of al Qaeda terrorists travel safely from Afghanistan to Iran after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"The fact that al Qaeda operates in many countries helps Iran achieve its goal of diverting U.S. attention away from Iran’s immediate neighborhood," the report said. "In return, al Qaeda uses Iran as a place where its facilitators connect al Qaeda’s senior leadership with regional affiliates."

"Iranians engage in two types of terrorist attacks," the report said. "One type includes sabotage, espionage, and bombing of target locations, while the other involves the assassination of dissidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both are perpetrated inside and outside of Iran."

Between December 1979 and May 1996 a total of 17 Iranians were assassinated by the MOIS, including the July 1980 murder in Bethesda, Md., of Ali Tabatabaei, the Iranian Embassy press attaché in the United States under the Shah of Iran.

Known MOIS-linked assassinations of dissidents inside Iran included the murders of 22 people between November 1988 and December 1998.

The report said the IRGC’s Quds Force is the main covert action arm of the Tehran regime, but that both the MOIS and IRGC cooperate closely.

MOIS agents also use clandestine agents to infiltrate Iranian communities around the world, usually through charitable groups that claim to support Iranian refugees.

"MOIS also has agents who abduct individuals abroad, return them to Iran, and then imprison or kill them," the report said.

For human spying, the Iranians are "extremely active," the report said, noting a highly organized and focused program against nearby states.

The Iranians have also deployed many agents to influence the government in Baghdad.

Other Iranian intelligence networks have been discovered in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Turkey.

Bill GertzEmail Bill | Full Bio | RSSBill Gertz is senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon he was a national security reporter, editor, and columnist for 27 years at the Washington Times. Bill is the author of seven books, four of which were national bestsellers. His most recent book was iWar: War and Peace in the Information Age, a look at information warfare in its many forms and the enemies that are waging it. Bill has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a “tool of the CIA” after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk after he wrote a column critical of the CIA’s analysis of China. And China’s communist government has criticized him for news reports exposing China’s weapons and missile sales to rogue states. The state-run Xinhua news agency in 2006 identified Bill as the No. 1 “anti-China expert” in the world. Bill insists he is very much pro-China—pro-Chinese people and opposed to the communist system. Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once told him: “You are drilling holes in the Pentagon and sucking out information.” His Twitter handle is @BillGertz.